The Willem

My Next Great Adventure

// September 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // Goals, Life, Prayer

Well, I’m settling in pretty nicely here at school…in Texas. I’m starting to get used to the heat,
but I’m not sure I’ll ever quite be used to the accents. Classes are great, my professors are
incredibly bright and caring, I’m making friends quickly, and even my roommates are a
blessing. I’m starting to find my way on campus and I’m getting involved with a couple
different activities, including helping to pioneer/plant a new church in town.

The biggest opportunity just hit tonight, though. I was just commissioned as the team leader
for a missions trip to Bulgaria this coming Summer. Over the coming weeks, I will get in touch
with the missionary we are working with, research Bulgarian culture and demography, find out
what type of ministries are already established and what we can and will do to help, recruit
team members, and plan and start fundraising efforts.

Here’s where you can help. The first thing this trip will need is prayer. Prayer for God’s blessing,
His financial provision, for divine favor in all aspects, and for His will to be clear to us (and
especially to me, as the leader). I also will probably have down moments where the world just
seems to be piling on and raising obstacles against this trip, so I will need occasional
encouragement in those times. I can’t promise I will stay in great contact with everyone
individually, but I will be updating Facebook notes and my blog pretty regularly concerning the
trip. Additionally, I will need fundraising ideas. I’m a pretty swell idea guy, and a great
researcher, but I can use all the help I can get with creative money-making projects. Finally, if
you want to make a direct monetary donation, get in touch with me.

Thanks so much everyone for your support throughout my adventures and for being as
wonderful a group of friends and family as I could ever have asked for. Love and blessings to all!

Transvestite Prostitutes Need Love Too

// November 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // Goals, Prayer, Strongholds

And it’s our job to give it to them. Plaza del Sol, the closest plaza to our house, is notorious for being the major gathering place of transvestite prostitutes in Guadalajara. This is a group of men (Yes, I will forever call them men, for God intended them to be so. More on that later.) is so tortured, so bound and shackled, and yet they are untouchable in the eyes of most Christians. I hesitate to blame this upon the conservative nature of Mexican culture pertaining to homosexuality and other such perversions of God’s beautiful gift to mankind, because I feel like they are equally ignored, abandoned, and avoided in our culture. Nobody knows how to reach out to them, how to love them, and everyone seems too scared to try.

There are thousands of prostitute ministries in this world, and I salute every single one of them. Certainly, some may be approaching the field without having counted the cost or without having a faint inkling of what they’re supposed to do, but they’re trying. They’re reaching out to broken women and offering the hope and the healing that only God Almighty can provide. While not perfect and certainly not easy, clean, or simple, prostitute ministries are something our Father absolutely throws His weight behind. Why? Because it’s an attempt to step inside His will for His beautiful and beloved daughters.

Here’s where our lives in Mexico get messy. Men who have had surgeries to try to look like women are not God’s beautiful and beloved daughters. Instead, they are God’s valiant and mighty sons. They are the leaders of families. They are the strength and the backbone of society. They are the governors and warriors of the people. They are sons of Adam, hand-crafted in the image of God Almighty, the Father in Heaven we are created to worship and enter into a loving relationship with. At least that’s what they were meant to be.

Instead, they are little boys tortured and sexually abused. They are cold, twisted, black hearts. They are bound and shackled by fear, by hate, by disease, by disgust, by neglect, by loneliness, by Satan. They are confused. They are hurting. They are lost. They dwell in darkness. They prowl the streets, repeatedly entering into slavery most foul. They sell their bodies and, thereby, their destinies as mighty men, for drugs, cash, or for a sense of belonging, of being wanted. They are looked upon with scorn by people of all walks. They are mocked by homeless beggars. They are threatened. They are pressured. They are hopeless.

Check that. They are not hopeless. We have a hope for them, and we once seemed hopeless ourselves. I’m reminded of 2 Corinthians 1:9-10

^“9Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us^(A) rely not on ourselves^(B) but on God^(C) who raises the dead. ^10(D) He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us.^(E) On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”

How, when we have been snatched from death (Romans teaches us that the wages of sin are death, and that we were all in sin before Christ snatched us from it with His sacrifice), though we were unworthy, how do we turn a blind eye to these tormented souls? How do we judge them? How do we condemn them? How do we determine that they, or anyone else, is beyond the hope of Christ?

Is it not our responsibility, no, our command from God Himself, to hold out hope for these men? Is it not our responsibility to hold them in prayer? Is it not our responsibility to love them at all costs? Is it not our responsibility to share the love of Jesus Christ, as well as His Good News, with them, before they are lost to the depths of Hell forever?

Of course it is. That’s not the question though, is it? We all know our responsibility. We all know our charge. What we don’t know, is how to do so. For now, it’s with a prayer-walk combined with praying at home for direction (half the group on the walk, half at home) every other Friday night. Someday, we hope to partner with a local church to physically launch this ministry (This is the Engage way. We make sure a local church is involved with our ministries so they will continue in case anything diplomatically catastrophic causes us to suddenly leave the country.), but until that point we are relegated to prayers and prayer-walking only. This is not to diminish prayer, as it is a vital part of one’s spiritual life and any ministry not covered in prayer generally serves very little, if any purpose whatsoever. However, we, as missionaries, tend to be people of action rather than people of waiting. These men are dying out there, and we want to intervene and help.

Please join us in prayers for these men, for the daily lives they lead (Who knows what that looks like? Do they have families? Day jobs? Can they even go to the store without being mocked and ridiculed?), for the nights they suffer through, for conviction and transformation, for light in their dark world, for partners in this ministry, for their safety and health, and for God to be glorified when they are redeemed by the blood of Christ. He died for them too. They just don’t know it yet.

Passions Can be Fickle Things…

// October 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // Goals, Reflection

I did a lot of thinking this weekend about passion. Passion for, against, and in between. Passionate love, passionate hatred, and all else.

My entire life, I’ve been passionate about running. The burn in your lungs, the pangs of exhaustion in your legs, the steady pounding tempo of feet on pavement, the sweet aroma of exhaust and body odor, the heat of your body using every ounce of energy it has, the reliable rivers of sweat seeping from your every pore. There truly is nothing like it. I ran the Nike 10k on Saturday morning, which was reportedly the largest race that has ever been held (calling it “The Human Race,” Nike hosted simultaneous 10k races in major cities across the world) and I finished. This was approximately twice as long as I’ve ever run, because I’ve always been passionate about running.

I joined the cross country team in middle school one year so I could train for soccer. I was never very good, because I was a bit of a chunk and, as previously-stated, I was passionate about running. I generally came in towards the back of the pack, but I finished all the same. I was never a boost in the standings and I usually felt like an outsider, as I was basically the fat, slow, asthmatic kid on the cross country team, just like on the soccer team. However, I stuck it out, even though I was passionate about running.

In high school, I was relegated to the C-Team even though I was considerably more talented than at least half of the Junior Varsity. Why? Because I was the hefty, slowish, out of shape kid. Why? Because I was passionate about running, of course.

Since my first step into Guadalajara, this city has taken my breath away. Actually, as cliche as that sounds, it’s been absolutely true. Being 7,000ish feet in the air makes it really hard to breathe sometimes, especially when one is running (which, in case you’d forgotten, I’m quite passionate about). Here, everyone and their dog and their friend and their cockroach is a runner. (Ok, so maybe not the friend, but at least everyone and their dog and their cockroach.) Two weekends ago, two of our leaders ran and finished a marathon. That’s intense. Those people are passionate about their running. A week and a half ago, I decided to sign up for The Human Race. (Yes, that’s as hilarious to me as it might be to one or two of you. I had to sign up and pay a fee to be part of The Human Race. This is why Nike pays advertisers so much money.) Having never run that far, I figured I could do it no problem. Little did I know, my passionate hatred of running would make this one of the worst and best mornings of my life.

For my entire life, I’ve hated running. I mean passionately hated. There has never been anything I like less. I don’t mean all forms of running, though. Put a ball out there and I’m going to run fast and love it. Throw a frisbee out in front of me and I’ll sprint after it gleefully and lay out fully-horizontal to catch it. Give me someone to cover in a pickup game of football and I’m going to laugh while running stride for stride with them. But suggest to me running for exercise or running for the sheer joy of it, and you will see a look of shock, disdain, disgust, and distaste. That is simply not my idea of a good time. It’s boring, it hurts, there’s nothing even remotely fun about it, I get sweaty and stinky, and my body is built entirely not for that. I’m passionate about running.

For the first three miles, I was doing pretty well. I was taking my time, but still moving steadily. After that, my body decided to remind me that I’d never run further than that before, and it sincerely didn’t want to this particular morning either. I gave in. I walked sporadically over the last three miles, but only walked for a few minutes total in the entire race and, most importantly, I finished. My target finishing time was 1 hour flat, but I came in around 2.5 minutes over that, which I decided to be 100% content with. Yes, I said content. When I crossed that finish line and picked up my medal, I was excited. When I got my first hugs from people who could not have cared any less about my disgustingly sweaty body because they were just so proud of me and excited for me, I felt accomplished.

It’s funny what happens when you push through pain and disdain and passionate hatred. People are proud of you. You claim victory over the adversary. Your passions change. I can’t wait to do a 5k in a couple weeks. I’m looking forward to doing another 10k in January. Next year, I’m going to try to do a half-marathon here in Guadalajara. You know why?

Because I’m passionate about running.